There’s no more reliable gauge of a quality set of music than its ability to give you goosebumps. By the end of the Middle East’s set last Tuesday, I thought I had hives.

The group, a six-piece pop/Americana act (playing with an extra member or two) from Queensland, Australia, have little more to their name than a recently-reissued 2008 EP and a good deal of buzz after hitting the US festival circuit in the past year. (I can’t even find their names on the Internet.) They filled the SPACE stage with members and instruments — keyboards, a handful of guitars, glockenspiel, drums, horns, accordion — and every element was used judiciously. Rarely does a band so large sound so uncluttered and precise.

Their music shares similarities with pleasing relatives — Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver — but it’s gentler and more subtle than all that, if equally dour at times. Three or four sweeping vocalists shared duties, and all joined in the staggering finale “Blood,” whose crescendo begins in whistles and fluttery acoustic guitar and ends in wordless reverie and orchestral triumph. I haven’t been so moved since the last time I saw Grizzly Bear.

Following in these massive footsteps was UK folk ingénue Laura Marling, headlining (surprisingly) the most well-attended show of her tour so far. Simultaneously shy and gregarious (she refused to play an encore, but apologized profusely), Marling’s gray, stormy folk (amplified by a backing band, at times) proved well-suited to the stage. Her voice, a force on record, revealed a more narrow range live, but her fraught narratives and steely command more than compensated.

Review: Jonathan Richman at Middle East upstairs The closing show of Jonathan Richman's three-night stand at the Middle East upstairs hit an early peak on the second song. "My Baby Love Love Loves Me" (from 2004's Not So Much To Be Loved As To Love ) smothered the audience with the intensely romantic side of his persona.

The Big Hurt: Lightfoot lives! Last week, the world was gripped in the terror of a GORDON LIGHTFOOT death scare when a realistic-looking Twitter obit was picked up by several Canadian papers.

Interview: Max Raabe "It was so crazy in the '20s, in the Weimar Republic. Everything was so open-minded and wide, and that is why I love that period so much."

Liars | Sisterworld Regardless of whether Liars have broken ground connecting the amateur groping of punk rock to the exotic modalities of modern (12-tone) classical and Eastern European music, Sisterworld feels utterly wrenched with bourgeois boredom.

How Sophomoric Hi, Technology is one of the more self-loathing collections of songs I've heard in some time.

Review: Rogue Wave at the Paradise On the first stop on their first tour in almost two years, Rogue Wave bounded onstage with what can only be called sheer delight, greeting the crowd like old friends they were pleasantly surprised to run into.

Fresh bedrock Dessa Darling could never be limited to one area of interest to devote her passions — an author, lyricist, singer, teacher, philosophy-degree holder and lover of linguistics who cuts off and donates her hair to children in need every time she releases something big.

Bach beat Composers John Harbison and Peter Lieberson are big presences this spring.

Sonny, Pat, and all the cats The primo jazz event of the spring will be SONNY ROLLINS 's concert at Symphony Hall on April 18 (bso.org). The great master saxophonist and peerless improviser often hits town in April, and this time it's to kick off his 80th-birthday tour. Whew.

Pluck and determination People have always thought that Joanna Newsom was indulgent. At first, it was about her voice — the kind of nasal yelp that usually keeps a performer from getting on stage at all. Then, on her second album, it was about her vocabulary and her instrumentation.

TEN YEARS, A WAVE | September 26, 2014 As the festival has evolved, examples of Fowlie’s preferred breed of film—once a small niche of the documentary universe—have become a lot more common, a lot more variegated, and a lot more accomplished.

GIRLS (AND BOYS) ON FILM | July 11, 2014 The Maine International Film Festival, now in its 17th year in Waterville, remains one of the region’s more ambitious cultural institutions, less bound by a singular ambition than a desire to convey the breadth and depth of cinema’s past and present. (This, and a healthy dose of music and human-interest documentaries.) On that account, MIFF ’14 is an impressive achievement, offering area filmgoers its best program in years. With so much to survey, let’s make haste with the recommendations. (Particularly emphatic suggestions are marked in bold print.)

AMERICAN VALUES | June 11, 2014 The Immigrant seamlessly folds elements of New York history and the American promise into a story about the varieties of captivity and loyalty.

CHARACTER IS POLITICAL | April 10, 2014 Kelly Reichardt, one of the most admired and resourceful voices in American independent cinema, appears at the Portland Museum of Art Friday night to participate in a weekend-long retrospective of her three most recent films.

LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX | April 09, 2014 Throughout its two volumes and four hours of explicit sexuality, masochism, philosophical debate, and self-analysis, Nymphomaniac remains the steadfast vision of a director talking to himself, and assuming you’ll be interested enough in him to listen and pay close attention.